


Heart of the Leviathan

by BackwardBandit



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Adventure, Corvo is grumpy, Corvo just doesn't trust the Outsider, Dishonored lore, Emotionally Damaged Corvo, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Smut, Low Chaos, M/M, Post-Low Chaos Ending, Romance, Sea Voyage, Slow Burn, Socially Awkward Outsider, Whaling, not really enemies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-21 20:45:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8260028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BackwardBandit/pseuds/BackwardBandit
Summary: Summary: The Outsider shows up at Corvo’s chambers one night after the events of Dishonored, powerless and mortal. Will Corvo be able to rescue the last leviathan and restore the Outsider to godhood, and get him to act like a normal human in the meantime? Probably not, but I’m sure you’ll find the attempt fascinating.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This all started out with me wanting to write the Outsider's origin story and do a character study on him, and it morphed into a story of its own. Liberties are taken with the world lore and some things will be my own invention. I will explain this more deeply when it comes up. I also am excited to explore my own take on Corvo as well and to develop a romantic relationship between the two while doing everything I can to keep them in character. Please Kudo or comment if it strikes your fancy. It helps me write like you wouldn't believe.

**Heart of the Leviathan**

Summary: The Outsider shows up at Corvo’s chambers one night after the events of Dishonored, powerless and mortal. Will Corvo be able to rescue the last leviathan and restore the Outsider to godhood, and get him to act like a normal human in the meantime? Probably not, but I’m sure you’ll find the attempt _fascinating_.

Chapter 1:

The knocking came around midnight causing Corvo to sit up in bed and draw the dagger he kept hidden under his pillow. His bare chest glinted with the sweat of another nightmare and heaved like the sea, pushing loud breaths through his clenched teeth. He surveyed the room, looking for whatever it was that woke him.

To be indulgently unoriginal, it was a dark and stormy night. He could hear the thunder cracking, the sea roiling, but these things did not usually wake him. Storms were common in Dunwall, especially this time of year. But something had definitely roused him.

He kicked the covers back and subjected his bare feet to the cold stone floor. He padded silently across the room, making sure to check behind the room divider and some curtains hanging drawn that separately his bed from the rest of his private quarters. All the while his scalp prickled. It wasn’t that he was afraid of storms (which would truly be ridiculous, seeing as he had grown up in Dunwall), but it made him uneasy none the less. A storm meant no moonlight, and all manner of dangerous beings cloaked themselves in the darkness. He knew, he was one of them.

The knocking came again then, louder this time, and Corvo realized that it had been the door that had awoken him. Someone was at the door, but what in the _Seven Strictures_ were they doing?

On soundless feet he crept forward, keeping his dagger close to his center, and put his eye to the keyhole. It wad habit he had never really abandoned, even after Emily had taken her rightful place on the throne. Even after the traitors had been weeded out and dealt with. Even now he always checked through his keyhole before opening the door, before he left in the morning. And he certainly did now in the middle of the stormy night.

There wasn’t enough light, but he was able to see by the flashes of lightning, which illuminated the slim torso of a man clad in a dark leather jacket. It didn’t belong to any of the palace guards or servants. Corvo considered the possibility that it was one of his informants from the web of people he had assembled after Emily had named him the new Spymaster, in addition to Royal Protector, but he discarded this idea. There were far more subtle ways of contacting him in an emergency and a visit to his chambers in the middle of the night was…sloppy.

“I know you’re there, Corvo,” came a passionless, dripping voice from beyond the wood and Corvo thought to himself, _no, it can’t be, certainly not_. He straightened up and opened the door. And was sure then that his eyes were playing tricks on him.

The young man that stood there was taller than Corvo by several inches and thin as a fence post. His face was moon pale and punctuated by impossible cheekbones. His hair was ink black and matted down with rain. His eyes, though, were all wrong. They were not completely consumed in blackness like he remembered. Instead, they were rather human looking. His irises were black, indistinguishable from the pupils, but the whites of his eyes did show around the edges.

“You,” said Corvo, unable to do anything else but stare.

“Me,” agreed the Outsider with a graceful flourish of his hands. He attempted to step past the flummoxed Spymaster, but Corvo shot out a hand to block his way at the last moment.

“what’s your business here?” Corvo asked. His voice was sleep-gruff and low. And he wasn’t completely sure that he wasn’t dreaming this.

The Outsider had the audacity to look surprised. “What have I done to warrant such suspicion, my dear Corvo? Against your own benefactor, without which you would have found a pointless demise long before the young empress could be rescued?”

“Don’t pretend you helped me for any other reason than your own amusement,” Corvo shot back.

“This is true,” the Outsider agreed after a pause. “But did you truly think there would not be a price to pay? Did you think I would not come to claim a favor?”

“Yes,” spat Corvo, and slammed the door in his face.

 _Perhaps he will find that fascinating enough_ , he thought to himself as he marched back to his bed. Sure, the Outsider could simply phase through the door and continue harassing him, but it was just so satisfying shutting the door on the deity.

The Outsider had not troubled him since Emily’s coronation almost a year ago. Corvo had glanced up that day to see him standing beside an old gargoyle up in the palace’s domed ceiling, just staring down with his affixed expression of boredom. Corvo had nodded at him, not a ‘thank you’, but a simple acknowledgment, and the Outsider had disappeared in a puff of black mist. That had been the last time Corvo had laid eyes on him. He thought it would be the last time ever since all the ‘excitement’ had wrapped up, but he had, apparently, thought wrong.

“So what is it then?” Corvo asked. His voice echoed emptily in the room and there was no forthcoming reply. He turned around then, but the Outsider had not followed him. He blew his hair out of his face and stalked back towards the door.

The Outsider was still standing there when he opened it looking, oddly enough, like a kicked puppy. Something was _very_ wrong.

“You. What’s wrong with you?” he asked, wrinkling his nose. There was _definitely_ something very wrong, but he couldn’t put it to words. The Outsider was somehow…diminished. Where he once possessed a dark aura about him, he was now without. His lines and edges no longer blurred and bled with the colors around him. He was strangely…solid. _And he isn’t floating around_ , Corvo tacked on. No, his feet were definitely on the ground, in soggy, muddy boots. Disconcerting, to put it lightly.

The Outsider cocked his head and managed to look patronizing at the same time, like he was talking to a child. Corvo wondered if, perhaps, he had only imagined that look of vulnerability. “I thought it was obvious,” he droned. “I’ve been reduced to a more… _temporal_ form.”

“What do you mean _temporal_?” Corvo asked. “Are you trying to tell me that you’re…?”

“Mortal? Yes.”

“Human,” Corvo finished.

“Well there is a certain nuance that discerns Human from Mortal, but yes, that is the general idea.”

“ _That_ is not possible.”

“Oh, come now, Corvo. Do you think I would be standing before you, wet with the rain of _your_ world, shivering from _your_ cold, if it were not possible?” The deity-turned-man chided. “Now, if I remember correctly, it is human custom to welcome me in to warm up and offer me worldly sustenance. And perhaps a drink of that alcohol you humans are so fond of. Tyvian Red, was it?”

Corvo let him pass this time, too confused to be much of an obstacle.

“And do wipe that look off your face,” The Outsider added. “It’s ill befitting of one of my disciples. I certainly hope you weren’t wearing it under that mask of yours.”

“I am not---!” Corvo started, but he cut himself off when his voice echoed loudly down the stone hallway. He looked around to make sure the Outsider hadn’t been followed and, seeing no one else about, pulled the door close and locked it.

The Outsider was looming over him when he turned around, just staring down at him with those strange human eyes. In any other situation, with anyone else, Corvo would had taken it as a challenge, an attempt to intimidate him, or a sexual overture, but seeing as it was the Outsider he highly doubted it was any of these. More likely the Outsider was simply unaware of personal boundaries and human courtesy. He had never seemed to have much regard for boundaries when he was a god, always floating just over Corvo’s shoulder whenever he was consulting maps or reading books, asking questions and offering commentary. One time, the deity had very nearly ridden Corvo’s back through an entire mission.

_“I thought you could only appear in dreams or at shrines,” Corvo had commented then, looking for any reason to shake the deity. He was busy blinking from building to building, but the Outsider had no trouble keeping up._

_“I can go wherever I’m welcomed,” the Outsider answered, leaving Corvo to continue wondering how in the_ Void _the Outsider was able to tag along if that was the case. He thought the Outsider was done speaking---he was usually as cryptic as possible---but the Outsider seemed to be in a talkative mood. “It’s the mark, if you must know. It binds us together.”_

_“Hmm. That seems a bit…intimate,” Corvo replied in (something approaching) humor. The Outsider’s next words caused him to stumble over a loose shingle._

_“It is more intimate than you can possibly imagine.” He was deadly serious. “It is a gateway, a portal, to the Void, and to me. It is a fraction of my power that you wield and in return you are my eyepiece, through which I can watch the events of the world. Why else would I gift mortals with my power? The years are long, and you come to realize that nothing really matters,_ that nothing _is the only truth, but every once in a great while there comes an individual that throws all of time into focus and carves out, not only his own fate, but the fate of the entire world. I don’t know why this is, but it is oh so_ fascinating _to watch.”_

Corvo shook himself out of the memory and leveled the Outsider with a glare. “I am _not_ your disciple.”

“No, of course not,” said the Outsider with an oddly buoyant tone, as though he thought it was completely laughable that Corvo would be anything but a loyal disciple. He tapped a long, bony finger on the bone charm Corvo wore around his neck.

“If you’ve come to ask for help you’re doing a terrible job of it,” he huffed, flipping the charm over his shoulder spitefully.

“Do you think so?” he asked, expression breaking up in the most subtle ways for the second time that night, something that had never happened when he was a powerful god. Not in vulnerability this time, but in confusion, a lack of understanding. He was like a child, being denied for the first time.

“Yes,” Corvo shot back. “I feel no obligation to you.”

The Outsider crossed his arms, something familiar for a change, and took a moment seemingly to choose his next words. “Very well, Corvo. It is not currently in my power to compel you to help me. If it was, there would be no reason for any of this to take place, however, I have a feeling you will be a bit more…eager once you fully understand the situation.”

“enlighten me.”

“Well, worst case scenario, the world will, quite literally, end.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember what I said about lore? Well I apologize in advance. I tried not to go too in depth in one spot, save details to add over time. But it's still a bit dense.  
> On another note: I'm not particularly happy with how this chapter turned out, but I finally just said fuck it.

Chapter 2:

The Outsider was indeed shivering under that old jacket of his, soaked right to his human bones. Corvo had seen many terrible things in his life time. Weepers frothing at the mouth, rats eating the flesh of the dead, his own empress murdered on her beautiful pavilion; but this was an image he had never known he would never want to see. The Outsider at his door, supercilious as ever, but bereft of his otherworldly presence, wet and cold like a beggar. It was something akin to what he felt when he had entered the slaughterhouse to see the proud behemoths of the deep being butchered like farm-raised livestock. He hated the pity he felt, for this entity who had only ever considered him a toy to play with.

“You’re dripping on the rug,” he finally said.

The Outsider stared down at him in confusion. “The world is most likely going to end. I just told you the world is going to end. Do humans have some other concept of what that means that I am not aware of?”

Corvo took a deep breath. “Alright, this is what’s going to happen. You are going to hang up your wet clothes while I get the fire going. Then we are going to sit down and talk about what _specifically_ that means. And then I will decide if I will help you or not. Yes?”

“Daud has always been far more agreeable,” the Outsider muttered off-handedly.

“Then go to Daud,” Corvo snapped, instantly irate at the mention of the Jessamine’s assassin. That seemed to quiet the Outsider. There was no forthcoming reply. Instead, he reached for the topmost buckle on his jacket and undid it, staring petulantly down at the spymaster.

“Wonderful,” said Corvo. He spun around to go poke at the softly glowing coals at the bottom of his fireplace. With a little patience and skill they were carefully stoked into a small flame, and then a larger, warmer flame. It would have been pleasant under different circumstances.

He tried to ignore the soft sounds of dripping water and the sopping shuffle of wet clothes. They only served to aggravate him further. He wonder if he should perhaps find something for the Outsider to eat. There was no telling how long the god-turned-man had gone without food, and he was already thin enough as it was. But Corvo didn’t have much in his chambers: a mottled pear on his desk, a tin of potted whale meat on a shelf. On second thought, the latter would probably be in terrible taste, if the legends were in fact true. Old pear it was.

“I believe you’ll find me presentable,” said the Outsider from over his shoulder. Corvo hadn’t even heard him approach. He glanced over and nearly choked on his own tongue.

“I only meant the jacket,” he blurted out. The outsider huffed impatiently and crossed his arms, an action that was totally at war with how _naked_ he was. Bone-white skin was everywhere. His arms and legs, his chest, his most private area, where a completely human set of genitalia sat unashamedly uncovered like low-hanging fruit. And it was shocking on a much deeper level than the simple shock of nudity. Corvo had never wondered if the Outsider had a human body under his deceivingly humble clothes. The thought had never crossed his mind. The Outsider was simply too alien. But the body standing before him wasn’t. Sure, it was paler and more slender than the common male form, but it was more or less comparable to the bodies of the many men Corvo had slept with over the years when he was a younger man, not yet saddled with the great burden and responsibility that came with the position of Royal Protector. The body, that was something he once knew very well. And on the Outsider it was disconcerting, to say the least. He wished he could say it was the most disconcerting event of the night, but that would really, unfortunately, be a lie.

“I suppose I should mention that I knew exactly what you meant, but decided to disregard it, seeing as all my clothes were wet and uncomfortable.” The Outsider somehow managed to make it sound as if it was Corvo’s fault that he found himself in a state of such discomfort.

“And this is more comfortable?” Corvo asked dubiously.

“It will be once you get me a towel.”

“Behind the room divider,” Corvo said, making it clear that he didn’t plan on budging. The Outsider sat next to him, cross-legged, a moment latter with the towel in hand, like it was the most normal thing in the world. Corvo, suddenly feeling his own state of undress, got up to throw on a nightshirt and a pair of well-worn trousers while the Outsider patted himself dry in the firelight.

“Alright,” Corvo started once he felt presentable. “Start at the beginning.”

The Outsider was watching the fire intently now, though Corvo had a feeling he wasn’t really seeing it. His black, human eyes were distant. He finished with the towel and thankfully threw it down over his lap, though the long expanse of his back was distracting enough…

Corvo halted his thoughts there. And then had the sudden urge to throw himself out of his window.

Sure, it had been years since he last had someone in his bed. Almost a decade, if he was being honest. But he had standards, and checking out the insufferable deity certainly violated them.

“How much do you know about me, Corvo?” he started. “About how I came to be.”

Corvo paused to give this thought. “Only what the Abbey says about you.”

The Outsider actually laughed at this, a light, bouncing thing that made Corvo want to lie down on the floor and not get up. It was almost…bewitching.

“That I am a winged serpent that feeds on the flesh of the innocent?” He continued mirthfully. “The bane of all existence?”

Corvo schooled his features, but could feel heat rising on his cheeks. “Among other things, yes.”

“The Overseers are fools. The lot of them,” he said. “I was born into this world as a human, like them, like you. Corvo, you look surprised.”

Corvo had really gotten too comfortable in the past year, if the Outsider was able to read him so easily. “This is relevant to the task at hand?” he asked.

“Well, seeing as I’m sitting before you now as a human, I would say it is.”

“Then by all means…” Corvo said, stalking away to examine a picture on the wall.

The Outsider began: “I was born in the winter, here, in Dunwall. But there wasn’t a Dunwall yet. This was more than three thousand years before the great burning, mind you. before history. The land was wild and untamed, with only small bits of civilization here and there. There was no Abbey in that time, so the people were free to worship however they saw fit.

“I suppose I must have had a mother and father, though I can’t quite recall their fate now. It was a fire, or perhaps they drowned, or starved most likely. All I know is that I was an orphan by my fifth winter and left to fend for myself on the streets. I don’t remember my name. It’s quite possible I never had one. Some of the poorest families never bothered with naming, you know. I had nothing to call my own. And so the villagers came to revile me. Perhaps they thought I brought bad luck. Humans can be so superstitious, you know. And without a name to scorn me with they began to call me ‘The Outsider’. It is self explanatory, is it not?”

“People can be cruel,” Corvo said, at a loss for anything else. There was something painful burning in his chest at the indifferent tone the Outsider used to describe his childhood. It was detached, like he was reading it from a text book and not reliving his own experiences.

“This is a revelation?” the Outsider asked. “Anyhow. As you can imagine, I was an easy target, but beyond that it was random chance that I was ‘chosen’, a proverbial role of the dice.

“There were two main branches of worship in that time. The more accepted, commonplace one that worshiped the whales as benevolent gods. Then there was the Cult of the Void, who were shunned even in that day. It is true, they practiced truly disgusting rituals, often involving blood sacrifice or orgies, as they tried to tap into the power of the Void. It worked sometimes, but more often it simply killed the practitioners instantly. The Void was, well, unstable. Philosophers of the occult came to the conclusion that the Void needed a will to occupy it. A being to divulge its power. I think you know where this story is going.

“When I was fifteen they abducted me and brought me to a secret cave that fed into the sea. There they subjected me to ritual torture, pushed me to the brink of human endurance, and drove me half mad. I think they were trying to break me down into nothing, to wipe me clean and make me a blank slate to fill with their own purposes, but that was only half of what was required. They needed an immortal soul to fill my empty shell with. For this they brought down the mightiest of whales and cut out its heart.

“The next thing I knew, I knew everything.”

“What happened after that?” Corvo asked, more involved in the Outsider’s than he cared to admit.

“I heard the Void singing to me, so I followed the sound of it. But not before killing my captors, slowly and painfully. The rest is, quite literally, history.”

“Forgive me if I missed something, but I don’t see what your…humanity has to do with the end of the world,” Corvo pointed out.

“No? I took you for an intelligent man, Corvo. Certainly you must have some idea.”

Corvo shoved his annoyance aside and analyzed the Outsider’s story. Something tickled the back of his mind, but when he reached for it, it slipped away. “Does it have to do with the whales?” he asked.

“It does indeed, Corvo, for _when the last Leviathan is gone, darkness will fall_. Does that sound familiar. It is one of the Heart’s favorite prophecies. Since the day this world was born out of the Void it has existed with it in close quarters, dancing around it on the celestial plane. It is a perilous relationship, kept in balance by only one thing. The World Pillars. Ring a bell?”

Corvo shook his head, though the Outsider had no way of seeing the movement. After a second, he continued.

“The Guardians Gods?”

Suddenly Corvo caught on. “The whales…are you trying to tell me it’s the whales that keep the Void at bay?” he asked.

“Well, just one very special one. The king of whales,” the Outsider corrected. “The last of its kind. Killed and reborn over four thousand years ago. The Leviathan. Until about thirty-six hours ago, that was me.”

“You. You’re the last Leviathan.”

“I am,” he answered. “I was, yes, but now I am only the weaker half of a whole. And weakening by the day.”

“What happened?” Corvo asked.

“Something very bad has happened to my counterpart.”

This was too much to take in at once. Corvo fetched the pear from his desk and tossed it between his hands, wondering how he could present it to the slight man. The Outsider hadn’t moved except to pull the towel around his shoulders. He looked so skinny without his trappings, his narrow hips were stark with light and shadows and his round, little bottom was pressed into the jug he sat on. It didn’t look very comfortable, but he seemed to be elsewhere at the moment.

“What an odd thing,” he finally said, holding out a hand to the flame. “That this tool of destruction, that has burnt countless cities to the ground, can be such a pleasant thing. I can’t quite remember the last time I felt it, really felt it.”

Corvo couldn’t help but feel whiplashed from the Outsider’s change in topic. There were so many questions he had, from inquiries about the Outsider’s childhood to the nature of the Void. He still didn’t quite understand the god’s relationship to the whale…leviathan, if he _was_ the Leviathan or if it was the other way around. Perhaps it was the Leviathan that filled his empty shell. It would explain his dubious grasp of human courtesy. Then again, it could just be because of his lonesome humanhood. Instead of asking any of these, though, Corvo simply followed the direction of the conversation, too worn to venture, and promised to log his queries away for another day.

“Things feel differently now?” Corvo asked, approaching the Outsider, but making sure his footsteps sounded clearly. He didn’t want to startle the man.

“When I woke up like this I was in some alley. I was cold and wet and it all felt so real. Now the fire feels really quite nice. My skin, it is different now. I cannot escape what my skin feels. I’m an age old god, but I cannot doing anything without _feeling_.”

Corvo sat beside him again and tossed the pear into the Outsider’s lap. The god…man caught it before it landed and gave a spymaster a curious look.

“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” Corvo asked. “Have you eaten anything yet.”

The Outsider gazed down at the fruit like it was a raw organ, even though his stomach chose that exact moment to growl. “No, I hoped to avoid it if I could.”

“I thought you wanted ‘human sustenance’.”

The Outsider shook his head, looking unsure again. Corvo wondered if perhaps his odd mood swings had something to do with his new body.

“You’ve been human for, what, a day and a half?” he asked.

The Outsider nodded.

“You need to eat,” said Corvo, in a tone that left no room for arguments. “Really. I can get something more filling from the kitchens.”

He made to stand up, but the Outsider caught his wrist. “I don’t want…If I can return to my old self quickly there will be no need for food.”

“No,” Corvo said, offering no other explanation. “You need to eat. What is your problem? I’m sure you’ll find something you like.”

“No it’s…what happens to the food,” he muttered turning his face away so that Corvo could not read his expression.

“…Happens to the…” Then Corvo burst out laughing.

“You laugh like you are somehow above it,” the young man snapped, hunching into his towel to hide the blush rising on his face. “But I know for a fact that isn’t true. In fact, your bodily functions in particular are perhaps the most revolting I have seen in two hundred years!”

Corvo’s laughter was halted immediately as the two stared just stared at eachother. He knew the Outsider was just blowing steam. He was no more revolting than the next person. There was no way, but still…

“Not that I watched,” the Outsider started. “I mean, I’m aware of everything that happens to the bearers of my mark, but…”

Corvo _really_ didn’t want to have this completely unnecessary conversation. He interrupted, “You’re going to eat. I’m not going to let you die and take the whole world with you all because you didn’t want to use the toilet.”

“Are you saying you’ll help me?”

Corvo huffed with annoyance and left to go find more suitable food, but his answer was clear enough.

 


End file.
